


Two Navis One Cork

by on_the_wing



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Crack, Innuendo, M/M, Wine, complete incompetence, music student au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 19:19:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_the_wing/pseuds/on_the_wing
Summary: Can two highly trained, talented, and dexterous sons of the elite manage to open a simple bottle of wine? Can they manage to keep their torrid feelings bottled up? Seems doubtful.





	Two Navis One Cork

**Author's Note:**

> This dumbass monstrosity was conceived from a late night verbal crack session with prismatic-cannon, who also did the illustrations and came up with the title. At least I think it was late night for someone, I forget who. I don’t have a very good grasp on the concept of time.

“I still can’t believe you have a special air-conditioned dehumidified room for your piano.” Ethan stretches and cracks his knuckles.  
  
Jules winces. “You’ll get arthritis if you do that.”  
  
“No, I won’t. But I might get rheumatism from the cold in here. My fingers are _numb_.”  
  
Jules picks up Ethan’s right hand and enfolds it in his. “It's freezing! No wonder you couldn’t play those sixteenth-notes. We should break for dinner, maybe that’ll get your blood moving.”  
  
Ethan eyes him. Was that a euphemism? You never know with Jules. But maybe he’s just hearing euphemisms in every sentence, the natural side effect of rooming with Cain. “Fine. But you need to play those chords softer, you're overpowering me.”  
  
“Pff. Get a move on.” Jules is already on his feet, tugging Ethan up after him.

Ethan stares down at their entwined hands, and Jules snatches his own hand back and shoves it in his pocket, striding toward the door. He waits impatiently, jiggling the knob. Ethan knows instinctively that he doesn’t want to let the warmer, relatively humid air of the hallway into the room to corrupt his precious Steinway grands, so he makes a point of stretching again before sauntering slowly up to the door. Jules rolls his eyes.  
  
They wander into the kitchen, and Jules rummages through the huge, gleaming black fridge. “I thought I had some leftover Thai food in here—oh, that was from Friday, Cecilia must have thrown it out. All right, it’s either crackers and cheese or delivery.”  
  
Ethan opens his mouth to lie that crackers and cheese are fine, but Jules interrupts, “Ugh, what am I saying? The crackers are probably stale. What do you want to get?”  
  
“Umm…pizza?” _That’s probably the cheapest._  
  
“Really? Okay, fine. What toppings? No pineapple, anchovies, or green peppers.”  
  
“How about…black olives?”  
  
“On _pizza?_ ”

“Are you kidding? Black olives are completely traditional. They’re on every menu.”  
  
“Yeah but who actually orders them?”  
  
“I do!”  
  
Jules sniffs. “How about chicken and spinach?”  
  
“Hmm…if it has olives too.”  
  
“Olives on _your_ half.”

“Okay, fair enough.”  
  
Jules calls in the order, adding a garden salad. Ethan watches him, silently contemplating the fact that neither of them ordered onions or roasted garlic, even though he loves them and he’s pretty sure he’s seen Jules eating them before. Is that…thing going to happen again? It’s happened twice now, two and a half times if you count that night in the basement by the vending machines. He’s not sure if he wants it to happen again. Even though it makes his head spin in a delightful way, a way that convinces him there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather do, things get weird and tense afterward. Jules snaps and criticizes extra hard for the next few days, as if he needed to sharpen his tongue again after using it in more pleasant ways.  
  
He suspects that Jules might have stopped speaking to him entirely if it weren’t for their duet. You can’t change partners halfway through the semester, though, and anyway everyone else seems to be comfortably settled in.  
  
“Ugh, I need some wine.” Jules grabs a bottle of Salaud Riche ’93 and rummages in a drawer. “Damn it, where’s the corkscrew?”  
  
“It’s not by the wine?”  
  
“Of course not, don’t you think I would’ve looked there first?”  
  
“Yeah, but sometimes it hides in plain sight.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know, if it’s not exactly where you were looking for it it can be invisible sometimes.”  
  
Jules stares at him. “Feel free to look for it yourself then.”  
  
“Okay. I _will_.” Ethan pushes past him to stare at the counter around the wine rack, while Jules continues searching the drawers. Even with the vast amount of space available, it doesn’t take much time to survey the counters, and he starts opening drawers as well. Drawers full of mystery. “What is this?” He waves a strange implement in the air.

“Don’t ask me, I don’t cook. A…cheese corer?”  
  
“Does cheese have a core?”  
  
“Maybe if it’s a runny Brie? Ugh, where _is_ it?”  
  
“You have so many things in here. Why do you have all these things if you don’t even cook?”

Jules sighs. “My mother gave them to me when I moved out. As a hint. I can’t get rid of them because she still checks when she comes over.”  
  
“You should get a…corkscrew stand. So you don’t lose it again.”  
  
“There’s no such thing as a corkscrew stand. Hmm, I could nail it to the wall though.”  
  
Ethan blushes.  
  
“I mean, put a nail in the wall. To hang it from.”  
  
“That would probably work.”  
  
“I have to fucking find the thing first though. Ugh. I am not drunk enough for this.” Jules opens a cabinet and pulls out a bottle of expensive-looking vodka.  
  
“You have to be drunk to figure out how to get drunk?”  
  
“Exactly. You’re learning already.” He takes a long swig and offers it to Ethan.  
  
Ethan stares at the bottle, then shrugs inwardly and takes a swig of his own, trying not to cough. He doesn’t want to think about where this is going, because thinking about it never helps, and booze may potentially help him stop thinking, although looking for a corkscrew might help more. He hands the bottle back to Jules and opens another drawer. Three swigs later they’ve run out of drawers.  
  
“That’s it. It’s gone. It’s disappeared. Ceceeeeeeeeelia, where isssssssss it?”  
  
“Cecelia’s not here right now, remember?”  
  
“Ugh, I forgot.” Jules cradles the wine like a baby. “I don’t want more vodka. It’s nasty. I want _wine_ , goddammit. The illussss…tr’ous fruit of the grape.” He nips at the cork, trying to pull it out with his teeth.

“Grapes…are already a fruit.”  
  
A crumb of cork falls out of Jules’ mouth. “ _You’re_ already a fruit.”

“Oh my _god_ Jules, are you sure you want to be more drunk than you already are?”  
  
“YES. I’m not drunk. I’m hardly even tipsy. Besides it goes through my system really fast. I’ll be sober in no time.”  
  
“Okay…um…maybe I can find something else to open it with.”  
  
“Hmm.” Jules waltzes gently with the bottle while Ethan digs through a drawer.  
  
“Here, give me the bottle.”

“What? Are you going to stab it? Don’t stab my baby!”  
  
“Just the cork. You were already going to stab the cork. That’s what a corkscrew does.”  
  
“No it doesn’t, it…screws it. Gently.”  
  
“That’s…um…essentially the same thing. Here, just hand me the bottle, okay? I won’t hurt it.”  
  
“You’re holding a _knife._ ”  
  
“I promise I won’t hurt the bottle. I’ll be gentle.”  
  
Jules pushes the bottle towards him. “I won’t look though. I can’t look. This is butchery.”  
  
Ethan slides down to the floor and props the bottle between his legs. “I thought you said you weren’t going to look.”  
  
“I’m _not_ looking. Just _open_ it already, _god_.”  
  
“I _am_.” Hyperaware of Jules’ eyes on him, he tries to slip the thin blade in between the cork and the neck of the bottle. _Tries_ being the operative word. _Fails_ might be a better word. Corks wouldn’t be very effective if they were that easy to pry out.  
  
Jules leans forward, draping himself over the kitchen island. “Try screwing it.”  
  
Ethan snorts before he can stop himself.    
  
Jules giggles. “ _Stop_ it. You know what I mean.”  
  
“I _know_ I know what you mean.” Ethan lifts his chin, then realizes he can’t see the wine bottle while doing that. He looks down again, then sets the tip of the blade into the cork and pushes, wiggling it slightly. The cork resists.  
  
“Harder. You have to do it harder.”  
  
“I can’t do it _that_ hard or it’s going to wedge it in.”  
  
“You’re _trying_ to wedge it in.”  
  
“I mean it’s gonna wedge the _cork_ into the _bottle_.” Ethan is starting to wonder dimly if his skill at removing the cork is going to be taken as representative of his skill in…other areas, and his forehead begins to sweat. Should he…lube the cork? No, that would ruin the wine. Don’t get too literal with this metaphor.  
  
“It’s already wedged in, how can it get any more wedged in?”  
  
Ethan twists the knife carefully, and a piece of cork flies off. “Ahh, fuck it.” He starts hacking away at it, digging out little chunks.  
  
“You’re killing it!”  
  
“Oh come _on_ , you wanted to pull out its cork and suck it dry.”  
  
“How crude!”  
  
“Well!”  
  
“I _suppose_ you’re technically right.”  
  
Ethan chops vigorously at the cork. If he can’t impress Jules with his finesse, maybe he can do it with brute strength and persistence. Not that he cares about impressing that…snob. He just wants to prove…something. He forgets what.  
  
“It’s going to fall into the wine,” Jules points out.  
  
“Do _you_ want to do this?”  
  
“Umm…no. Just make sure you don’t scratch the glass though. Powdered glass is poisonous. Well not poisonous, but you know. It’ll kill you.”  
  
“I _know_.”  
  
“I _know_ you know, that’s why I said you know.”  
  
The knife slips through at an angle and a chunk of cork plops down into the wine. “Damn it! Oh well, maybe I can get the rest out now.” The rest of the cork refuses to pop out, but now it’s easier to carve pieces out. He thinks crumbles are still falling into the wine, though.

Ethan hacks resolutely at the stubborn thing, and after what seems like half an hour another largish chunk slips away into the depths of the bottle, allowing him to spear the remainder and wrench it out. “Yessss! Victory!” He waves it in the air like the severed head of an enemy impaled on a spear, and takes a mighty swig from the newly open bottle, immediately coughing up some cork crumbles.  
  
Jules surfaces from his phone. Was he taking pictures?! “Finally! Hand it over!”  
  
“It’s got—ptt—cork in it,” Ethan warns.  
  
“Eh, I don’t even care at this point.”  
  
“I care.” He scrambles to his feet, setting the bottle on the counter. “I know! We can strain it out!”  
  
“Oh my goddddd. Too much effort.” Jules droops over the counter like a wilting pansy, coincidentally in the direction of the wine bottle.  
  
“I’ll do it! I’ll find something. You must have something to strain liquids with, right? You have _everything_ here.”  
  
“Uh, I guess.” Jules’ hand closes around the bottle, and he takes a surreptitious swig. His hand immediately covers his mouth.  
  
“We could use a salad spinner, right? Or what do you call it, a colander? You must have one of those.”  
  
“Oh my _god_ Ethan, just give it up.”  
  
“No.” Ethan gets down on his hands and knees and starts digging through the unfairly deep cabinets, cavalierly tossing pots, pans, woks, plastic containers, mixing bowls, canning jars, sushi mats, rice cookers, waffle irons, panini presses, popsicle molds, and other implements of more mysterious provenance out onto the floor.  
  
“Ethan you’re making a huge mess.”  
  
“There it is!” He brandishes a stainless steel wire colander that looks as if it’s never been used.

  
  
Jules quickly stows something in his pocket and wipes his mouth. “That’s not going to work. The holes are too big.”  
  
Ethan stares at it and sighs. Jules is right. “I think I saw something in one of the drawers.” He starts to shove things back into the cabinets.  
  
“Ethan just leave them, Cecilia’s going to have to rearrange them anyway now. She’s going to yell at me while I have a hangover, and it’ll be all your fault.”  
  
“Um. I didn’t make you drink a lot of vodka?”  
  
“ _Yes you did._ ”  
  
“Uh okay. Anyway you should drink some water now, that’ll help.”  
  
“Fine.” Jules peels himself off the counter and trudges over to the fridge.  
  
Ethan ransacks drawers until he finds a rectangular hand-sized sheet of metal with a handle; it’s punctuated by tiny squarish holes, each with a raised bump over one side. A…cheese grater? Lemon zester? Exotic torture implement? “This’ll work! The holes are totally small enough.”  
  
Jules eyes it doubtfully. “I don’t know about that. It’s kind of narrow.”  
  
“So is the neck of the wine bottle! It’ll be fine.”  
  
“Ethan are you sure you’re not still drunk?”  
  
“I was NEVER DRUNK.”  
  
“Okay….”  
  
Ethan scoops up a large mixing bowl, places it on the floor between his knees, and holds the…thing with holes over it with one hand. With the other, he tilts the wine bottle. Wine hits the grater with a dramatic splash, splattering his white sleeves with purply red. “Shit. Shit.”  
  
“Ethan! You’re wasting it!”  
  
“Shut UP. Just let me concentrate.” He tilts the bottle more carefully, and this time the wine only hits the sides of the bowl. This time he’s almost certain Jules is taking pictures, but he doesn’t dare look up. “I wanna make sure all the cork bits stay on the grater.”  
  
“Oh my god, I thought you said _cock bits_ for a second.”  
  
“Jules, are you sure you should be drinking any more?”  
  
“I’m _completely sober_ now. You just slur a lot.”  
  
“ _That_ is a slur!” Ethan finishes pouring the wine. There are suspiciously few cork bits on the grater—three that he can see—and several suspicious little lumps floating in the bowl. Fine. He’ll just fish them out. “Could you hand me a spoon?”  
  
“Wine is not traditionally imbibed with a spoon, just so you know.”  
  
“I know. Just give me the fucking spoon, unless you want me to use my fingers.”  
  
“Ooh baby, use those fingers.”  
  
Is Jules making fun of him? Fine. He’ll pick the cork bits out of the wine with his goddamn fingers. Alcohol is a disinfectant anyway. Huh. The bits are kind of slippery and elusive. And the wine is dripping down his sleeve. Fuck.  
  
“Ethan, you are an _animal_. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Jules is just openly taking pictures now.  
  
“ _Fuck you_ Jules. When I start something, I finish it.”  
  
“Is that so?” he purrs.  
  
Ethan glares. “Yes.”  
  
“All right then. Carry on.”  
  
“Stop taking pictures. I can’t concentrate.”  
  
“You’re a performer. You need to learn how to handle attention.”  
  
“Attention is one thing, heckling is another,” he grumbles. After a few more dips he decides he can’t see any more lumps in the bowl.  
  
“So how are we supposed to drink it now, genius? Lap it up like dogs?" Oddly, Jules doesn’t seem too displeased at the prospect.  
  
“No, we’ll put it back in the bottle.”  
  
“Oh god. Ethan, amusing as it is to watch you get drenched in wine, I do want there to be some left to drink.”  
  
“There WILL be some left. All of it left. That’s left already, I mean. We’ll make a funnel.” He sets the bowl down and staggers to his feet. “I saw a floppy plastic cutting board right…here. I’ll roll it up and—”  
  
“How about we just try putting it in glasses instead of back in the bottle? That’ll be easier.”  
  
Ethan considers. “All right.”  
  
Jules hands Ethan his empty water glass, and then another. He sets them up on the counter, picks up the bowl and sets it on the counter, and tries to roll the cutting board into a crude funnel shape. It takes some maneuvering, but he finally manages it. Holding it tightly together with his left hand, he lifts the wine bowl with his right and begins to pour. The arrangement works surprisingly well, and he moves to the second glass.  
  
Just then Jules yawns and stretches, shirt riding up to show several inches of bare midriff. Ethan’s hand slips, and the funnel loosens. He frantically flexes in an attempt to tighten the funnel, and a small burgundy wave flies out and hits him smack in the chest. “GAAAAH. Stop distracting me!”  
  
“What did I do?”  
  
“You keep…moving. And stuff.” Ethan reforms the funnel, gritting his teeth, and carefully pours most of the remaining wine into the second glass. He takes the cutting board to the sink to rinse it off, and after a deliberate lack of reflection pulls his shirt off to run it under the water too.  
  
Jules is suddenly right behind him. “No! You can’t just rinse off wine stains. You have to blot them and salt them first.” He reaches around Ethan for the shirt.  
  
Startled, Ethan whirls towards him. Their arms bump together and Jules’ heart-shaped face hovers a few inches away, looking faintly surprised. Without thinking he drifts a little closer. “I thought you were…supposed to use an ice cube or something,” he mumbles.  
  
“Idiot. That’s for gum.” Jules hesitates, staring at his mouth, then snatches the shirt and pulls away.  
  
Ethan decides it’s _his_ turn to get drunk, and wanders over to pick up a glass of wine while Jules deals with the shirt. Hmm. His host’s movements seem suspiciously brisk and coordinated for someone as tipsy as he appeared to be earlier.  He’s not exactly a great judge of wine, but this stuff is pretty tasty. Maybe he’s just hungry. Ugh, there’s another bit of cork. On impulse he chews on it thoughtfully, then, worried he’ll look like a cow, tactfully spits it out into his hand.  
  
Feeling restless and a bit chilly, he naturally drifts toward his favorite place in Jules’ gigantic penthouse apartment: the living room. It has some other froufrou name that the architects gave it, but he can’t remember it and it’s full of _miles_ of deep luscious velvety sofa that Jules rarely lets him touch because he tends to just sink headfirst into it and wallow. Sofa means living room, right? Now, unsupervised, he can’t decide whether to throw himself into the buttery embrace of the sofa or plaster himself against one of the glass walls— _all the walls are glass!_ —to stare open-mouthed at the soul-suckingly magnificent view below.  
  
Whoops, his eyes jumped the line and he’s already up against the window, the neon pointillist canvas of the night unfurling before him. Brr! The glass is cold! He jumps back and clutches his nipples.  
  
“Ethan! What are you doing in there?”  
  
“Uh. Nothing!”  
  
“I can’t let you alone for a moment, can I? Come back here!”  
  
He slouches rebelliously back toward the kitchen. Jules is waiting to intercept him in the murk of the dining room, a slender but vaguely menacing figure outlined by the light from the kitchen. Goosebumps spring up along Ethan’s chest and arms.  
  
“I’m cold,” he announces with as much bravado as he can muster. “Do you have a shirt I could borrow?”  
  
“Maybe.” Jules eyes his bare torso and steps closer. “Or…we could turn the heat up.”  
  
“Jules did you really just— _mmmmph!_ ” He can smell and taste the wine on his rival’s breath, and somehow Jules becomes its living embodiment, heady and supple and demanding, warm body sending a tingling flush through his own, hands curling and twining in Ethan’s hair, trapping him and pulling him inexorably off balance.  
  
Without thinking Ethan moans, hands sliding down Jules’ hips, reaching further back, further down, feeling muscles contract as his fingers dig in. There’s no point in pretending anymore, no false dignity to uphold, and anyway it doesn’t matter because Jules is undone too, little sounds escaping from both of them that are somehow both pleading and aggressive, each of them shamelessly rubbing against the other. They’re kissing as if this were goodbye forever, because it could be, you never know—neither one fully trusts the other, or himself.  
  
They stumble toward the table, and Ethan hardly has time to protest before Jules lifts him abruptly up onto it and pushes him down on his back, nipping aggressively at his throat and collarbone. “Ow. Oh! Mmmmh…” Ethan’s hand flops to the side and hits something bumpy and metallic. “Jules?”  
  
“Mmh, yes?”  
  
“I just found the corkscrew.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Look.”  
  
Jules stares, then laughs. “Screw the corkscrew!” He knocks it out of Ethan’s hand, and it skitters across the table and clatters onto the floor.  
  
A small voice in the back of Ethan’s mind worries that now it’ll be even more thoroughly lost, but that voice is quickly silenced by the teeth on his nipple. He gasps and wraps one leg around Jules, then shifts uncomfortably. “Do we—really—oh—have to do this _here?_ It’s giving me a backache.”  
  
“You just want to fuck my sofa,” Jules snickers.  
  
“Even if I did, _which I don’t_ , this is hurting my back and I invite you to switch places and find out if you don’t believe me. It doesn’t have to be the sofa. It can even be the floor.”  
  
“Aww, all right.” Jules grabs his hands and pulls him back up off the table, kissing him and gently rubbing his lower back. “Only the best for my delicate blossom.” With a mighty heave, he hoists Ethan up off the floor and staggers toward the living room.  
  
“Eeeh! Hahaha. Jules are you sure—” They abruptly collapse in a tangle of limbs, giggling and swearing. “That was—mmmmh! very noble of—mmmhh—you. But maybe I could just walk the rest of the way.”  
  
“I could roll you up in a ball and kick you there—no? Hahahaha.”  
  
“Very funny. Come on.”  
  
“Ooh, impatient, are we?”  
  
“Like you aren’t.” Ethan pulls his face back and Jules instinctively follows him. “I thought so.”  
  
“ _Fuck_ you, Ethan.”  
  
“That _was_ the idea, wasn’t it?” Ethan can’t believe what just came out of his mouth.  
  
“Oh.” Jules’ voice takes on a different quality. “If you want that, we’ll have to go to the bedroom.”  
  
Ethan opens his mouth and stops, blushing furiously. He’s rescued—or rudely interrupted—by the mellow chime of the doorbell.  
  
“Shit. The pizza.” They look at each other. “As the host I guess I’d better get it,” Jules sighs valiantly. He pries himself off with difficulty, and climbs to his feet, offering his guest a hand up. “Why don’t you go wait…wherever you want to be. Unless you want to eat first.”  
  
“We can eat _later_ ,” Ethan says, and promptly runs off to do a nosedive into the living room sofa. He’s not sure he’s quite ready for…that other thing, no matter who’s doing it to who. Although it’s very um, interesting to think about. He wriggles around onto his back, props his head on his arms, and sighs happily. For now, he doesn’t have to think at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually tried the funnel thing (with water instead of wine). It worked perfectly, not a drop spilled.
> 
> Violetnyte supplied the idea of Phobos kicking Abel to his intended destination instead of carrying him.


End file.
